young and beautiful || larry s.

chapter 29

It's very early morning. Louis can tell by the way the sunlight looks pale, gliding into the room and sparkling the air with dust particles.

Can tell by the way it illuminates his curtains, setting the creamy, wispy fabric on white fire.

Can tell by the way that Harry's pale skin glows beneath it, can tell by how his hair is haloed in shimmering, frizzy light, and can tell by how his breathing blends perfectly with the clouds that are beginning to roll into the pastel blue sky.

Louis has slept, maybe, a total of fifty minutes the entire night. And it was a tumultuous fifty minutes.

Because even in sleep he thought about Harry (always Harry), and his arms only gripped the boy's sleeping frame all the tighter, afraid he would slip away again. Because, fuck, Harry literally showed up on his doorstep out of nowhere. In one blink he could be gone, swallowed up by his cold, cruel world once more, leaving Louis' arms barren and head clouded. And, really, that sort of creeps Louis the fuck out because there is just something terribly wrong with this picture and it has a lot to do with the bags under Louis' eyes and his vice-like grip on an unconscious, emotionally-stinted boy.

This definitely isn't how he imagined university to be.

Which. Oh well.

He remains that way, clutching onto a blissfully sleeping Harry as the sunlight strengthens, until at last his bladder speaks-and there's no arguing with that bitch. Carefully, he removes himself from Harry, whose arms are tucked into his chest, whose brow immediately furrows at the loss of contact. Louis can't help but smile at that as his feet hit the cool wooden floor, his hands hot and soft from where they'd been lost in the fabric of Harry's shirt. He watches Harry curl into himself, quiet and small and young, and fuck, Harry wasn't meant to sleep alone, he just wasn't-he needs Louis back in there with him, enveloping his too-long limbs and petite bones. Louis needs to climb back in that bed this instant.

But.

But he really has to pee, like now. He fucking hates his bladder.

So he slips out of the room silently, his heart on fire.

It's as he's creeping back to his bedroom, his skin icy and his arms already itching to embrace Harry's sweet, sleeping figure again, (he refuses to feel creepy about this-kittens snuggle together and nobody questions that, do they?) that there's another knock at the front door.

Louis blinks.

A visitor? At this hour? They don't even get visitors.

He opens it suspiciously, slowly, before he's practically bowled over by a ball of blonde energy.

"Heya mate! Good morning!" Niall booms, thundering into the flat and breaking the quiet serenity. "Sorry I didn't come home last night-figured you'd be sleeping anyways. But here I am now! I've really got to make another spare key and have Rory keep a set." His clear blue eyes and pale, golden hair look like the morning, his smile shooting forth the rays of the sun, his rumpled green jumper and black suede jacket soft and clean like fresh grass.

But Louis still wants to kill him. With a shovel.

"Shh!" he reprimands, glaring. "Keep your damn voice down will you, man? He's still sleeping!"

It's just as Louis is inwardly beating himself with a shovel (he absolutely did not intend to inform Niall of Harry's choice of sleeping quarters because that is going to turn into a whole thing) that Niall's confused eyes skim clear past Louis, settling somewhere over his right shoulder.

Fuck.

Louis' stomach plonks a bit as Niall's eyebrows shoot up, spinning around almost fearfully despite fully knowing what to expect.